James Crow Dies

James Crow Dies

January 11, 2012







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James Crow, who was a population geneticist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has died, reports The New York Times. He was 95. Crow studied mutational load, and was part of on a National Academy of Sciences committee that assessed mutational damage to the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki following the use of atomic bombs there. He also was on a committee that paved the way for using DNA forensics in court. The Times notes that when Crow began teaching in the 1940s and 1950s, the field of genetics underwent rapid changes. "When anxious students asked Dr. Crow what would be in the exams, he would tell them that the questions were the same every year but that the answers were different," the Times says.

High Frequencies of De Novo CNVs in Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia.

Neuron. 2011 Dec 22;72(6):951-63.

High Frequencies of De Novo CNVs in Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia.

Malhotra D, McCarthy S, Michaelson JJ, Vacic V, Burdick KE, Yoon S, Cichon S, Corvin A, Gary S, Gershon ES, Gill M, Karayiorgou M, Kelsoe JR, Krastoshevsky O, Krause V, Leibenluft E, Levy DL, Makarov V, Bhandari A, Malhotra AK, McMahon FJ, Nöthen MM, Potash JB, Rietschel M, Schulze TG, Sebat J.


Source

Beyster Center for Genomics of Psychiatric Diseases, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA; Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA; Stanley Institute for Cognitive Genomics, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY 12824, USA.


Abstract

While it is known that rare copy-number variants (CNVs) contribute to risk for some neuropsychiatric disorders, the role of CNVs in bipolar disorder is unclear. Here, we reasoned that a contribution of CNVs to mood disorders might be most evident for de novo mutations. We performed a genome-wide analysis of de novo CNVs in a cohort of 788 trios. Diagnoses of offspring included bipolar disorder (n = 185), schizophrenia (n = 177), and healthy controls (n = 426). Frequencies of de novo CNVs were significantly higher in bipolar disorder as compared with controls (OR = 4.8 [1.4,16.0], p = 0.009). De novo CNVs were particularly enriched among cases with an age at onset younger than 18 (OR = 6.3 [1.7,22.6], p = 0.006). We also confirmed a significant enrichment of de novo CNVs in schizophrenia (OR = 5.0 [1.5,16.8], p = 0.007). Our results suggest that rare spontaneous mutations are an important contributor to risk for bipolar disorder and other major neuropsychiatric diseases.

Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.